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Genre

Nectar in a Sieve is a social novel. It is also a pastoral novel (novel of the countryside), a naturalist novel, a love story, and a parable.

Narrator

Rukmani, who is also the protagonist, narrates her story as reminiscence approximately ten years after the events she describes.

Point of View

Rukmani tells the story of her life in the first person, narrating her own direct observations, motivations, and feelings and describing other characters through her own eyes.

Tone

Rukmani’s voice in the novel is direct, simple, clear, and unrelentingly honest, even when she recounts painful and shameful events.

Tense

The story is told in the past tense, except for the opening lines and occasional commentary, in which Rukmani uses the present tense to establish herself as an older woman looking back on her life.

Setting (Time & Place)

Nectar in a Sieve takes place over a span of about thirty years in the first half of the 20th century. The novel is set in an unspecified small village and an unspecified large city in a rice-growing region of India.

Major Conflict

On the surface, Nectar in a Sieve is a story of the struggle between life and death for the very poor in an unjust society. However, the novel’s transcendent struggle is between the forces of good and evil in a human life, characterized by generosity and greed, compassion and selfishness, and joy and sorrow.

Rising Action

Rukmani turns to Kenny for help with her infertility without telling Nathan, allows wrath to overtake her when Kunthi threatens to expose her to Nathan, and puts her family at risk of starvation during the famine to satisfy Kunthi’s extortion demands.

Climax

The night Rukmani loses herself to a rage so intense that she tries to kill her daughter, mistaking her for Kunthi, is the moment when there can be no turning back for her in the choice between good and evil.

Falling Action

Rukmani finds peace by telling Nathan the truth, and she grows in love, compassion, and generosity despite the death of their sons, the loss of their land, and the degradations they face in the city.

Foreshadowing

One example of foreshadowing in the novel is Rukmani’s restriction of Ira’s freedoms to protect her from the tannery workers foreshadows the troubles Rukmani’s sons will have with them. Anohter example is that Ira’s marriage that is “too good to be true” foreshadows future troubles with her fertility and security. Finally, Kunthi’s prostitution foreshadows Ira’s similar choice.

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